'The Most Important Books which I Would Strongly Recommend to Acquire': Petr Kropotkin and Vladimir Burtsev in Correspondence with the British Museum Library

Abstract

The community of Russian émigré intellectuals who settled in London in the 1880s and the 1890s continued their scholarly and revolutionary activities in England, congregating around the British Museum. Two leading figures, Prince Petr Kropotkin (1842-1921) and Vladimir Burtsev (1862-1942), made donations to the Library and wrote to the Library’s authorities pointing out lacunae in the collections. This article prints correspondence addressed by Kropotkin and Burtsev to Library curators such as Richard Garnett over the period 1882-1896.